#8 - Top of 2017

Kaipa - Children of the Sounds (Century Media)

Kaipa are back after the excellent release of 2014's "Sattyg" and grace us with another treatise on how to combine  music craftmanship of the highest callibre with beautiful content, dressed in the colors of spring!  Starter "Children of the Sounds" is a classic Kaipa song drawing influences from their earlier periods along with some early "Flower Kings" vibe. "On the Edge of New Horizons" is the true masterpiece of the album and where the brilliance of the band truly shines. It keeps the listener on edge through many shifts and turns accompanied by  novel vocal lines, folk elements and instrumental orgies and a dramatic ending. Here one should note that the top-notch rhythm section of the band (Jonas Reingold and Morgan Agren) that acts as the glue that keeps it all together. Like a Serpentine is a more "earthy" piece, opening slow and building its pace more steadily. "The Shadowy Sunlight" mixes folk and eerie elements impecably and uses the vocals of Aleena Gibson to build an atmosphere around the piece that is not what one might expect from Kaipa, but a transedent experience nevertheless. The closer of the (almost) 1 hour album comes with "What's Behind the Fields", that is influenced more than anything else by rock legends Uriah Heep, once more bringing their influences to their own style and creating a song that along with "On the Edge of Horizons" will surely be included in the "Best of"album when the band retires.

95.4/100

Below are the lyric videos for "Children of the Sounds" and "What's behind the fields"